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> It screams of being the pet project of some very high level engineers. This seems true of so many Google projects lately, big promises that don't deliver and

by ncann 4y ago

> It screams of being the pet project of some very high level engineers. This seems true of so many Google projects lately, big promises that don't deliver and get shelved in a few years.

lumost 4y ago
This is a Truism of big anything. Once people are high enough in an organization and we’ll connected enough… their projects are unassailable. I can guarantee you that somewhere in google is a team of 3 getting shut down for making 100MM a year with a boring tech focus. Meanwhile Fuscia continues unquestioned.
cbozeman 4y ago
This isn't a "lately" phenomenon. This has been the Standard Google Playbook for about the past 15 years.
baobob 4y ago
This comment and the parent got me thinking of the contrast between "privilege" and "merit" as useful ways to describe some of the difference between small company land and the likes of Google. How many product disasters could be attributed to the wrong people accidentally possessing or ageing into privilege? I wonder if Plus or Reader could be phrased in these terms
- djbusby 4y ago
  I don't think one just ages into privilege. One early win to make some marks would certainly help and give privilege for next projects.
  - lumost 4y ago
    This is true, but there is a survivorship bias. Someone who sticks around gains credit from the work of those who left. Exponential growth in a core business means promotions for everyone. Someone who is considered "good" gets looped into key projects. After 4-5 years these become a self-fulfilling prophecy in some organizations, as "good" people get attached to the growth drivers.
summerlight 4y ago
Being a pet project of very senior engineer is not necessarily a bad thing. You know what? MapReduce, BigTable, Spanner, TensorFlow and tens of other important infrastructures were once Jeff Dean's toy projects. I don't think Google even can exist without them... Important thing is execution of the project, not its inception.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Something changed though. Those projects are ancient
  - metadat 4y ago
    Jeff Dean is also a legend and not just a "senior engineer", more like google's version of John Carmack.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      Phil Cutler is probably a better equivalent but yeah, definitely legend status either way.
      - daydream 4y ago
        You mean Dave Cutler?
        jpgvm 4y ago
        Yes, brain fart. No idea how I subbed Dave for Phil but I guess that is what I get for typing while tired.
  - summerlight 4y ago
    You want some recency? Search for Pathways, which is a backbone for PaLM.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  Those projects all had a unique and very successful take on the problem they were solving, though. The problem with creating a new OS is getting people to write apps. It's not really justifiable if your new OS doesn't take a very different approach to how apps are written and yield much better results as a consequence. If you build a new OS and rely too heavily on emulated Linux apps, then what is your value proposition? You're effectively admitting defeat up front by saying there's no real reason to write a native app; that running Linux apps is good enough. With Fuschia this problem is especially apparent because it's not really obvious from reading the docs what its value prop really is, or how the UX of a native app differs from any other platform. Successful operating systems don't normally have this problem. You could argue that Linux was an exception, but there the value prop was being an open source PC UNIX and that price/compatibility point was enough. Other platforms though, like macOS or Android, needed to have a very clear offering up front to get developers to care, as well as a large library of first party apps.

by ncann 4y ago

> It screams of being the pet project of some very high level engineers. This seems true of so many Google projects lately, big promises that don't deliver and get shelved in a few years.

lumost 4y ago

This is a Truism of big anything. Once people are high enough in an organization and we’ll connected enough… their projects are unassailable. I can guarantee you that somewhere in google is a team of 3 getting shut down for making 100MM a year with a boring tech focus. Meanwhile Fuscia continues unquestioned.

cbozeman 4y ago

This isn't a "lately" phenomenon. This has been the Standard Google Playbook for about the past 15 years.

baobob 4y ago

This comment and the parent got me thinking of the contrast between "privilege" and "merit" as useful ways to describe some of the difference between small company land and the likes of Google. How many product disasters could be attributed to the wrong people accidentally possessing or ageing into privilege? I wonder if Plus or Reader could be phrased in these terms

djbusby 4y ago
I don't think one just ages into privilege. One early win to make some marks would certainly help and give privilege for next projects.
- lumost 4y ago
  This is true, but there is a survivorship bias. Someone who sticks around gains credit from the work of those who left. Exponential growth in a core business means promotions for everyone. Someone who is considered "good" gets looped into key projects. After 4-5 years these become a self-fulfilling prophecy in some organizations, as "good" people get attached to the growth drivers.

summerlight 4y ago

Being a pet project of very senior engineer is not necessarily a bad thing. You know what? MapReduce, BigTable, Spanner, TensorFlow and tens of other important infrastructures were once Jeff Dean's toy projects. I don't think Google even can exist without them... Important thing is execution of the project, not its inception.

kortilla 4y ago
Something changed though. Those projects are ancient
- metadat 4y ago
  Jeff Dean is also a legend and not just a "senior engineer", more like google's version of John Carmack.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    Phil Cutler is probably a better equivalent but yeah, definitely legend status either way.
    - daydream 4y ago
      You mean Dave Cutler?
      - jpgvm 4y ago
        Yes, brain fart. No idea how I subbed Dave for Phil but I guess that is what I get for typing while tired.
- summerlight 4y ago
  You want some recency? Search for Pathways, which is a backbone for PaLM.
mike_hearn 4y ago
Those projects all had a unique and very successful take on the problem they were solving, though. The problem with creating a new OS is getting people to write apps. It's not really justifiable if your new OS doesn't take a very different approach to how apps are written and yield much better results as a consequence. If you build a new OS and rely too heavily on emulated Linux apps, then what is your value proposition? You're effectively admitting defeat up front by saying there's no real reason to write a native app; that running Linux apps is good enough. With Fuschia this problem is especially apparent because it's not really obvious from reading the docs what its value prop really is, or how the UX of a native app differs from any other platform. Successful operating systems don't normally have this problem. You could argue that Linux was an exception, but there the value prop was being an open source PC UNIX and that price/compatibility point was enough. Other platforms though, like macOS or Android, needed to have a very clear offering up front to get developers to care, as well as a large library of first party apps.